Mian Mian 棉棉 is one of China’s most controversial contemporary authors, famous for covering topics that were once off-limit to China’s literary world. Her semi-biographical novel ‘Candy’ 糖 became famous for portraying a dark, underground, post-reform China where life of the country’s young generation is ruled by sex, drugs and violence. Candy has received a lot of attention in the Western world, so I naturally wanted to know what the buzz was about. Since the book had been banned in China, I wasn’t able to get my hands on a copy until I returned to Europe, though.

Candy manages to get off on a good start. The first half of her book is a quite compelling read. The story is emotional, but well structured and the insights into Mian Mian’s dark underground world are fascinating. But after a while you can’t help but feeling like walking in circles.  Mian Mian keeps writing about the same issues over and over again, which may be an attempt to make the reader feel her emptiness, but stylistic means like that just don’t work. What is even worse, her book kind-of ‘deteriorates’ after the first half. Her writing looses focus. She discusses things which don’t seem to be of any relevance to the main storyline and  she constantly switches the perspective of the narrator, which gives her book a rather immature feel.

The book doesn’t read so much like a novel, but rather like a diary. And with all the drug-related stories I wondered if Mian Mian has written parts of Candy when she was high. Nevertheless, I still liked her book. I just hope her future works will have more substance.

• Wiki.en: Mian Mian
• Amazon.com: Candy by Mian Mian
• China Daily (2005-03-01): Mian Mian reaches maturity with ‘Panda Sex’
• Anxiety Neurosis: Article on ‘Shanghai Panic’, a movie written by Mian Mian

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Many Westerners who would like to use QQ, China’s largest instant messenger & social network, feel deterred by the standard QQ software. The programme feels very heavy, looks bloated and is full of advertising. And since the QQ network is usually not THAT important to us, we either look for alternatives or we rather not use it.

I have posted about LumaQQ, a Java-based alternative to the original software, about three years ago. I didn’t use LumaQQ for too long back then and from what I can gather from their homepage, the project seems to be dead by now. The Pidgin QQ plugin, which comes with the main programme by default (download here), was much more convienent and has bascially worked flawlessly for the last two years. Until last summer, when Tencent decided to close the channel for third party clients. At first, users were still able to ‘circumvent’ their blocks by changing a setting in Pidgin that told the server you were using a much newer version of QQ. However, Tencent was quick to fix that hole and now you will usually receive a message like this one when trying to sign in: “您的号码可能存在异常情况，已受到限制登录保护，需激活后才能正常登录。激活网址：http://jihuo.qq.com” — literally: Don’t come back until you got the propper software. Adium, Pidgin’s sister-client for Mac OS X, suffers from the same problem, but won’t get fixed either until the Pidgin devs update the libraries.

Unfortunately, QQ isn’t the highest priority on the list for Pidgin’s developers. Moreover, I’ve heard that the Pidgin QQ plugin is based on LumaQQ code, so I’m not too optimistic about receiving a fix soon. So what options are left? There are a couple of Linux apps that still boast QQ support, Kopete for example. But as I don’t use Linux for everyday work that doesn’t really help. And I wasn’t able to get Kopete to sign on using it on Windows via the experimental ‘KDE on Windows‘. Seems all the third party clients are having this problem. So until someone comes up with a solution to circument Tencent’s new block, the only option left would be to use WebQQ. WebQQ works similar to Microsoft’s Web Messenger for MSN. It’s an online interface for their chat network that runs in your browser and enables you to log in from any computer with internet access. Unfortunately, the website is Chinese-only, so it may be a little difficult to navigate if you don’t speak Chinese. Give it a try, though — you might have to stick with it for a while.

• WebQQ: http://web.qq.com/

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Many of my posts cover topics relevant to students of Asian languages. Today is no exception If you’re studying an Asian language (or any other language that appears ‘exotic’ from a Western point of view), you will be familiar with the concept of ‘flashcards‘. And you will also know that, at some point during your studies, you just reach a point where it’s not feasible anymore to write flashcards by hand. There will be a moment when you realize that you need to make more progress in much shorter time if you want to succeed. And flashcards have certain drawbacks: once you start using the Leitner system (see Wikipedia for a short rundown) it’s difficult finding cards when you suddenly realize that you need to change or correct something. Also, flashcards have only a frontside and a backside, which is not enough if you need to memorize: a) a foreign character, b) the stroke order of that certain character, c) its various pronunciations and finally d) its translation. Things may get even more complicated depending on the language you’re studying. So having multiple card sides available (preferably adjustable by yourself) is a big plus, which is an advantage software-based systems can offer.

But software has disadvantages as well. You won’t be writing a character down physically when you create a card, you will only type it into a virtual computer programme — and as your daily quota of words increases, it might take a while until you finally get to practise those words. I often found myself merely ‘processing information’ rather than learning a language. Software is also rather inflexible. You could take your flashcards anywhere and practice. Heck, you could practice while waiting for the water to boil or at the bus stop. But who wants to boot up a computer every time he wants to run a little piece of software to learn Chinese? Which is why interoperability with mobile devices is important. Unfortunately, except of a few commercial web applications (which require internet access — not good), there are very few options for your cellphone. In fact, there is only one that I know of, called MobVoc — a very young vocabulary trainer that can be installed on Java-enabled mobile phones. Apple also offers a vocabulary trainer for the iPhone which can open files created with iFlash, an excellent Mac OS X vocabulary trainer. I will try to give a short overview over the most popular programmes below.

jMemorize (Windows, Linux, Mac, others/Open Source)

Version tested: 1.3.0
Homepage: http://jmemorize.org/
Opens .jml (jMemorize’s own format), .csv, .tsv
Saves: .jml, .pdf, .rtf, .csv

I will start with jMemorize as it’s the vocabulary trainer I’ve been using since starting university. It’s neither the best application, nor the most versatile. In fact, the longer I used it, its shortages have become more and more apparent to me, but first things first jMemorize is an open source project that has been running for a couple of years already. It’s a Java-based vocabulary trainer, so it will work on a whole lot of different systems, including Windows 9x systems. It is a relatively lightweight application, yet when loading a larger file, the programme seems to slow down a little. The presentation is simple, and the whole application just ‘feels right’. The interface is very intuitive and the graphis showing you your ’stacks’ of flashcards are a nice idea.

The downsides: flashcards only have two card sides, just like the paper ones you use in real life. So its not very suited for studying Asian languages. Unfortunately, this was something I only realized later after spending hours typing my vocabulary into the programme So I admit I’m a little reluctant to switch now. The file format, although XML, looks confusing and a little unstructured. That makes it im- and exporting vocabulary from or to other programmes difficult. Last but not least: depite a very active online community and many feature requests, the programme hasn’t received an update for over a year now. But however you put it, it’s still the application I started studying Chinese with and it has proved very stable for the last three years, longer than most programmes survive on my hard disk, so it deserves its place here

Anki (Windows, Linux, Mac/Open Source)

Version tested: 0.9.9.8.5
Homepage: http://ichi2.net/anki/
Opens: .anki, .mem, .wcu, .xml
Saves: .anki, .txt

This is an application I’ve heard of before from students of Japanese. But my attention was drawn to Anki again through a friend who now uses it to study Chinese. Seems the developers widened the focus of the application a bit The most intriguing feature of Anki is certainly its online capabilities. On the Anki website there is a feature called Anki Online, which is nothing else than a browser-based version of Anki, which allows you to practise wherever you have internet access. Technically, this should also work on more advanced mobile devices, but I didn’t check up on that. You can even synchronize your card decks with the Anki webserver automatically. Certainly a nice gimmick.

The programme interface is very lean and intuitively designed. It’s easy to use, right from that start. Precreated card decks are available on startup through an integrated download manager. It’s clear that Anki is one of the older projects around, which have received a lot of work already. Everything, including keyboard shortcuts, is very well thought through. But even Anki can’t deny where it’s coming from. You will definitely notice that it was originally designed to study Japanese, but that shouldn’t keep you from using it for other purposes. One last issue I have with Anki is that, despite the fact that you can create three-sided cards (character – pronunciation – translation), it looks like it’s not possible to check for the pronunciation separately (or at least I wasn’t able to find the corresponding function), which is a little disappointing. If Anki had that feature, it would be nearly perfect.

Update (2009-10-17): I was told that you can indeel tell Anki to check for pronunciation separately. You just need to create a deck of cards with three sides and then configure Anki the right way. Must have slipped past me when I checked the programme, but it’s good to know it’s there Great feature.

Mnemosyne (Windows, Linux, Mac/Open Source)

Version tested: 1.2.1
Homepage: http://mnemosyne-proj.org/
Opens: .mem, .wcu, various .txt and .xml formats
Saves: .mem, .wcu, .txt, .xml

One application I’ve found on Wikipedia before writing up this post is Mnemosyne. Mnemosyne was the fastest programme I tested. It’s graphical user interface is extremely clean and the whole application feels very very light. The simplicity comes at a price, though. Mnemosyne is not as customizable as the other programmes covered. As much as I liked the coding, though, I have to admit that, similarly to Anki, I don’t quite understand why the author goes through the hassle of creating a system that allows the user to enter three-sided cards, but not to check for the pronunciation separately when memorizing new words. Also, I found the system of storing cards a little confusing. As soon as you enter a new vocabulary, the programme seems to create two cards — e.g. if you study German, Mnemosyne would for each vocabulary create one card English->German and another card German->English, instead of just flipping the card around when needed. I could imagine that this causes a lot of redundancy. Still, I think that this programme would be best suited for casual users, who don’t need a lot of options, but something that just works. Precreated card decks are available on the Mnemosyne homepage.

Parley (Linux/Open Source)

Version tested: 0.9.1
Homepage: http://edu.kde.org/parley/
Opens: .kvtml, .wql, .xml.qz, .pau.gz, .voc, .xdxf, .csv
Saves: .kvtml, .csv

The next programme on the list is ‘Parley’, an application included in Linux KDE’s Education package. Parley is one of the most mature vocabulary trainers I’ve seen by far. Not only does it open a whole bunch of different formats, it also has a very thoughtful designed interface and plenty of settings. You can add as many sides or languages to a card deck as you want. And the programme even handels verb conjugations, in case that exists in the language of your choice I admit I haven’t used the programme much, which is due to the fact that it’s only available for Linux so far — which is also the programme’s biggest disadvantage. HOWEVER, the KDE developers are working on a port of their desktop environent to Windows, called ‘KDE on Windows’, which can be found and downloaded at http://windows.kde.org/. They have made tremendous progress already, but it’s still a work -in-progress and not recommended for everyday use. If you really want to  give it a try, head over to their website, download the installer and choose to install the KDE education package. After the installation, you will find Parley in Start Menu -> KDE – > Education. The Windows version of Parley still shows a few error messages every now and then and it is a little slow. I’ve especially had trouble when running the app in a normal user account instead of my administrator account.

The main reason why you will want to keep an eye on this project, though, is MobVoc. MobVoc, which is available on http://mobvoc.sourceforge.net/, is a small vocabulary trainer for Java-enabled mobile phones. It’s extremely light, fast and responsive and runs on even the most basic Java -equipped phones. The project was only started in 2008 and so far MobVoc basically just flips through the words, but doesn’t save which words you actually learned. So as a vocabulary trainer, MobVoc doesn’t live up to its purpose, but it’s an ongoing project. And it’s free Precreated card decks for Parley and MobVoc are available on the Parley homepage.

Update (2009-11-15): After using Parley for a few days on Ubuntu Karmic Koala, I found that it doesn’t fully live up to what it promises. In spite of all its useful features, the programme in general feels a little buggy and many features just don’t work right. I’m not sure if this is related to my system, but I for my part will stick with jMemorize for now. Having a basic but stable vocabulary trainer counts more than dozens of fancy features.

iFlash (Mac/Freeware)

Homepage: http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/home_learning/iflash.html
Opens: .cards, .csv
Saves: .cards, iPhone and iPod projectors

I didn’t really get to test this programme as I’ve never owned a Mac myself., but many of my friends use or used it, and I’ve seen it in action for the whole first semester at Jiaotong University thanks to Kai So I figured I should include it for the sake of completeness. Similarly to Parley, the application looks very mature already. Other than the applications above, the interface looks much leaner, but it doesn’t lack any of the essential features. Very Apple Especially the controls seem very intuitive. You flip through all the card sides with your cursor keys, then use the space key to mark a card as learned. iFlash vocabulary files can also be run on iPhones and other mobile devices, however the corresponding software doesn’t allow the user to mark things as learned, just like MobVoc above, which is particularly disappointing since the rest of the programme looks very well designed. I am sure there will be a fix for this some time, though. So if you’re a Mac user, I wouldn’t know why you would need to change

Other programmes

• Pauker (Windows, Linux, Mac, others/Open Source): http://pauker.sourceforge.net/
  A programme that doesn’t look very up to date anymore, but seems to have influenced later vocabulary trainers a lot. Many programmes presented here allowed for Pauker files to be imported.
• FlashBack (Windows, Linux/Open Source): http://linux.softpedia.com/get/Education/FlashBack-3490.shtml
• BeLearn (Windows/Payware): http://www.beblock.de/produkte/vokabeltrainer/
  First app I used when studying European languages at school. Very nice and intuitive interface. Checks user input. Drawback: bad customer service, see this post.

Conclusions

Choosing the winner is tough. If I had to generalize, I would give the award to Parley and iFlash. Both for their flexibility and their useful features. But the perfect programme for you really depends on your personal requirements and what you’re trying to do. Many people have been happy with Anki or jMemorize just as much The biggest problem is the lack of intercompatibility between different applications. There is no central file format that all applications implement. Even the formatting standards for plaintext .txt or .csv files differ from one programme to another. So choosing an application which can open and save different formats is crucial before you start typing hundreds of thousands of words into your computer.

It’s also a great pity that there are not more mobile Java applications around. MobVoc looks very promising, but hasn’t been updated for quite a while already. And again, interoperability is a problem here. Another feature I would like to see in more programmes is support for multiple card sides. If you want to learn an Asian language or if you just want to compare languages (e.g. memorize English and French words at the same time), multiple card sides just come in handy. This is an advantage that physical flashcards can’t provide and where computers can be a real help.

Last but not least: Remember this post is a work-in-progress. If you come across software that looks interesting or addresses one of the shortcomings mentioned here, please feel free to add a comment and share your findings with other readers. Although I’ve been mainly covering free/open source software, comments presenting commercial software are also very welcome.

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Nachdem das Jahr an der Jiaotong-Universität nun beendet ist, möchte ich als Nachtrag zu den Zwischenberichten über das DAAD-Jahr an der Jiaotong-Universität nun auch den entsprechenden Abschlussbericht online stellen. Vorerst nur mein eigener Bericht:

• Abschlussbericht 1 – Shanghai Jiaotong-Universität 2008/09

Immerhin: Einer der Zwischenberichte, die wir im Januar gepostet haben, hat es nun doch auf die Seite des DAAD geschafft

Update (2009-10-17): Hier nun auch der zweite Abschlussbericht

• Abschlussbericht 2 – Shanghai Jiaotong-Universität 2008/09

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It’s been a while since I’ve been blogging, mainly since my schedule for the rest of my stay in Asia has been quite tight. But after a visiting an exhibition of Ai Weiwei 艾未未 in Roppongi 六本木 this week which left me with conflicting feelings, I figured I should give some thoughts on what I have seen.

A little background knowledge first: Ai Weiwei is a famous contemporary Chinese artist with an interesting past. He grew up in Beijing and Xinjiang and lived in New York for more than a decade. In the West he is best known for his collaboration in the design of the famous ‘Bird’s Nest’, one of the stadiums for last year’s Beijing Olympics. Not always uncritical of the Chinese government he certainly had his share of trouble. Only this year his blog was shut down when he tried to publish material relating to an investigation into the number of students who died during the 2008 Sichuan earthquakes.

I have to admit that I only heard his name once in a while, but largely ingored him so far. Yet, perhaps owing to his huge reputation, even I occasionally stumbled across his works and, although much of modern Chinese art is said to be overvalued and superficial, I liked what I saw. Now I am the last person who would qualify as a critic of art, but being a more-or-less average guy who has some knowledge of East Asian history and speaks Chinese reasonably well, I think I could be a good average measure.

I only stumbled across his exhibition by chance while paying a visit to the Chinese embassy in Roppongi, running into a huge billboard at the exit of Roppongi Station on the Hibiya Line. I didn’t follow the Chinese art scene much, but I went to my share of galleries and art centres while living in China, so I figured this could be a good opportunity to check out the much-talked-about artist. I went to see the exhibition the following week. It was held in a rather fancy location: in the Mori Art Museum 森美術館, located on the 53th floor of the Roppongi Hills Mori Tower 六本木ヒルズ森タワー. Students get in for 1,000 Yen, which includes free admission to the observation platform. Quite a strange way to get yourself in the mood for an exhibition, but not necessarily a bad one.

As good a location as Roppongi may seem to be, at least for me it is the least attractive part of Tokyo — particularly the central parts along the main street and Roppongi Hills feel like anything but Japan. At daytime the area is full of foreign Yuppies, everything from restaurants to clothes stores is incredibly expensive and, simply put, the place gives off bad vibes. At night Roppongi turns into a little Pattaya. There are night clubs catering especially to foreign men and Japanese women, host clubs and plenty of massage parlours. Violence, dirt, human trash. That and the fact that there was no Chinese throughout the whole exhibition made me wonder what this was all about when I entered the first room.

Nevertheless, I found that the exhibition managed to get off on a good start. Items were placed in an enormous white room with lots of natural light. Everything was kept very simplistic, reduced to its basics, which I found very appealing. There was plenty of space between the objects, leaving enough room to contemplate them without being distracted by anything around you. Photographing was allowed, too, which I liked. Art is something liberal, so it should be treated that way. Citations of Ai Weiwei were dotted sporadically along the white walls and short explanations next to each object contained useful information on each piece without overwhelming casual visitors like me. Sometimes they would reveal small surprises — for example, by telling you that the big cube you are looking at is actually made of compressed tea leaves.

But after a while things got somewhat trivial, or even banal. Although Ai Weiwei certainly has an aptitude for presenting art in a very light, accessible way, his next pieces were disappointing. After a tea cube came a model of a house … again made of tea. Further on, there was a room where a movie was shown of a day when Ai Weiwei was driving through Beijing on Chang’an Avenue 长安街, stopping every 50 meters to record a one minute video. The concept certainly had potential, but was executed poorly. The stops were too close to one another, ‘one minute’ was a rather rough guess (scenes turned out to be around two to three minutes long) and all in all it simply wasn’t very interesting, since the camera was stubbornly pointed in the same direction all the time, sometimes recording a new, unoccupied apartment block for two to three minutes where not a soul moved. The result was a film which was hours long — and who, of even the most serious art fans, is going to watch more than half an hour of this?

Another odd piece was a snake made of school bags. I wasn’t sure what to make of it (snakes evoke different meanings in different cultures), so I read the explanation and found out that it was supposed to be a memorial to the school children who died in the 2008 Sichuan Earthquake in Wenchuan 汶川. While the earthquake was a big tragedy, I didn’t particularly like seeing this in an art exhibition. It made me think of all the media attention the earthquake and the aftermath have received, so it was a little like watching the evening news on TV, not like walking an art gallery. I am not saying that art shouldn’t reflect upon real life happenings, but I found that this piece didn’t fit here. Think of it like going to a gallery of modern art and finding a huge memorial dedicated to soldiers fallen in World War II. After a house made of tea, you would most likely feel upset in some way, however creatively presented the piece would be.

In the next room things picked up a notch. Ai presented pieces with fascinating background stories relating to his childhood in Xinjiang. But then you turn around only to see a big piece of wood in the shape of China and you can’t help but think “Come on, try harder, Ai Weiwei!” I was starting to get annoyed by the occasional patriotism in his works, but thankfully this feeling didn’t last long as I turned towards more interesting objects, such as an old table cut in half and propped up against the wall, which was refreshing after so many pieces loaden with context and political connotations.

Nevertheless, what I had seen up to this point was still rather mediocre and lacked innovation. But then, I thought, does art necessarily have to be creative, profound, deep? Does it have to entertain us and suit our tastes and values? Can’t art just exist for itself? I can’t say that I liked everything in the exhibition, but on the other hand I have rarely given so much thought on what I have seen at an art gallery before. Still feeling confused I continued reading Ai’s explanations, only to find out that many of his works are made of Chinese antiques. In this way, I found a series of photos quite disturbing which portrayed the artist dropping an antique vase, thousands of years old. In a quote on the wall, Ai said he does this to destroy the values of authority and tradition, represented by these objects, and to question their meaning. Hell, I understand that he has a certain artistic intention and tries to create a new piece of art by doing this, but in the end he still destroyed a vase and with it thousands of years of cultural tradition!

Only after a while did I really understand what Ai tries to convey. I went over his explanations again a few more times, but it wasn’t until I came back home and started reading more about his life and his past that I came to understand him. Although art shouldn’t need any explanations, this background information was essential. The Sichuan earthquake, for example, is of special imporance to him as it relates to an quarrel with the Chinese authorities who would rather not let people draw conclusions about the corruption involved in poorly constructed school buildings. The reason Ai ‘abuses’ Chinese antiques in the way he does is because he tries to discover new meaning by dismantling and transforming cultural objects. This becomes more clear after looking at the objects featured towards the end of his exhibtion. I especially liked two pieces: a small Tang Dynasty 唐朝 statue in a bottle of Absolut Vodka and a pottery jar with a Coca Cola logo painted on. As Ai points out himself, these objects symbolize changes in tastes, aesthetics and human desires, the contradictions between traditional crafts and mass-produced objects, the past and the present, the East and the West.

The last piece in his exhibition was an enormous structure assembled of parts leftover from previous antiques. The explanation was somewhat vague, but the central point was something like ‘if you look at the structure from above, it resembles the shape of China’.

I can’t help but look at Ai Weiwei and get the feeling that I am looking at an honest, nice and creative person. Yet I also feel that he needs to free himself from his traditional ways of thinking in order to create something truly exceptional. ‘According to what?’ is something I tended to ask myself quite a few times during his exhibition.

> Mori Mueum: Ai Weiwei – According to what?

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